Protestantism.

Schism in the Church had become a public fact, and theological hatred was
in full blaze throughout the country.

The great practical question in the Church had been as to the appointment
of preachers, wardens, schoolmasters, and other officers. By the
ecclesiastical arrangements of 1591 great power was conceded to the civil
authority in church matters, especially in regard to such appointments,
which were made by a commission consisting of four members named by the
churches and four by the magistrates in each district.

Barneveld, who above all things desired peace in the Church, had wished
to revive this ordinance, and in 1612 it had been resolved by the States
of Holland that each city or village should, if the magistracy approved,
provisionally conform to it. The States of Utrecht made at the same time
a similar arrangement.

It was the controversy which has been going on since the beginning of
history and is likely to be prolonged to the end of time--the struggle
for power between the sacerdotal and political orders; the controversy
whether priests shall control the state or the state govern the priests.

This was the practical question involved in the fierce dispute as to
dogma. The famous duel between Arminius and Gomarus; the splendid
theological tournaments which succeeded; six champions on a side armed in
full theological panoply and swinging the sharpest curtal axes which
learning, passion, and acute intellect could devise, had as yet produced
no beneficent result. Nobody had been convinced by the shock of
argument, by the exchange of those desperate blows. The High Council